New York Rep Jerry Nadler has told reporters outside of the Democratic Party meeting today that they must support President Joe Biden who has made it clear that he is running this November.

As most of the media – and the United States – remains laser-focused on the president’s poor debate performance, a handful of outspoken analysts have wondered: Where is the same scrutiny of Trump?

Donald Trump’s recent denial that he knows anything about Project 2025, a 900-page proposal by the Heritage Foundation think-tank for a radical reconfiguring of the US federal government to suit hard-line conservatives, has been ridiculed by one of his former Republican allies.

“This is preposterous if you look at the collaborators and the authors of this plan,” commented ex-Mike Pence adviser Olivia Troye on CNN.

“A lot of these people… served in Trump’s cabinet during his administration. There are people that I worked with. I sat in those policy meetings with them.”

Naming ex-Trump administration figures John McEntee, Stephen Miller, Ben Carson and Ken Cuccinelli, Troye added: “I think what this is telling us is that Donald Trump knows that what is written in this plan is so extreme that it is damaging to his possibility of getting elected, and that’s what he’s concerned about.”

If you’re not familiar with Project 2025, it is deeply sinister and proposes replacing US civil servants with Trump loyalists, eliminating the Education Department, placing the Justice Department at the president’s whim and banning the abortion pill.

Here’s Alex Woodward’s introduction.

Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer has ruled out running for the Democratic nomination for president this year, even if Biden does cave into pressure and step aside.

“It’s a distraction more than anything,” Whitmer told the AP in an interview to promote her excellently-titled new memoir, True Gretch, which just so happens to be out next week.

“I don’t like seeing my name in articles like that because I’m totally focused on governing and campaigning for the [Biden-Kamala Harris] ticket,” she said flatly.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) will drop abortion limits from its current platform as the party conforms to the whims of Donald Trump.

While Trump has been concerned about the political impact that the issue may have on Republicans, the platform change is a move that anti-abortion activists have been arguing against.

An RNC committee adopted a draft platform on Monday that states “Republicans will protect and defend a vote of the people, from within the states, on the issue of life.”

The platform will be finalized next week following a vote of the full convention.

Gustaf Kilander has more.

The popular Vermont senator, himself no spring chicken, sat down with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins last night to discuss the Biden furore and offered some sharp critiques of the media and the “donor class” over their outsized influence.

His more youthful ally Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has also belatedly come out in support of Biden.

As Biden struggles to convince his fellow Democrats that he remains the right man to take on Trump in November following his disastrous debate performance in Atlanta last month, two party insiders have proposed a novel “blitz primary” process for choosing his successor.

Rosa Brooks and Ted Dintersmith, a Georgetown University law professor and venture capitalist respectively, began circulating a memo to wealthy party donors and members of the Biden administration and campaign on July 2 in which they outline their plan for replacing the 81-year-old president as the Democratic nominee.

Here’s a look at what precisely they are proposing.

More than 15 years ago, the late Senate majority leader Harry Reid defiantly declared: “I don’t work for Barack Obama. I work with him.”

Blunt as that may be, Reid explained something few people understand about politics: Even if members of Congress share a party with the president, they are not his employees.

They are his partners and, sometimes, their interests may diverge.

Now, Reid’s successor in that role Chuck Schumer and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries are living the lesson, as President Joe Biden faces mounting calls from congressional Democrats to step aside in favor of a potentially more viable candidate in the 2024 election.

Here’s Eric Garcia’s report.

Washington representative Adam Smith yesterday became the sixth congressional Democrat to call publicly for Biden to step aside and let a younger candidate challenge Trump for the presidency.

Here’s James Liddell with a look at the sextet – and the five more who have made the same appeal behind the scenes.

Over on his social media hellscape (arguably the real “poison” afflicting the nation), Trump has begun quoting the likes of MSNBC’s Joy Reid and CNN’s Van Jones in his latest attacks on the president.

He has also been busy promoting his Hannity interview and his latest campaign rally later today in Doral, Florida.

Here’s Gustaf Kilander on the blustering businessman’s disappearing act since the debate as he allows Biden to struggle to escape a net of his own making.